


earthly desires

by dragonbagel



Series: gimme shelter [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Drug Use, F/M, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Non-Explicit Sex, Sexuality Crisis, Time Skips, Unhealthy Relationships, Zuko (Avatar)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonbagel/pseuds/dragonbagel
Summary: Zuko feels like he’s going in circles. He is incomplete, inside and out; he is dishonorable, a deplorable monster.His shame only worsens when they stop at a port and he realizes, with an overwhelming, guilty nausea, why he’s never liked Mai the way he knows he should have.or: zuko’s journey to unlearning the guilt of love(can be read as a stand-alone!)
Relationships: Jet/Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: gimme shelter [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867984
Comments: 56
Kudos: 570





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire story is heavy but especially this part, please heed the tags

Azula is the first to offer the idea that Zuko has a crush on Mai.

It isn’t a suggestion, really; like most of their childhood conversations, it’s just another attempt to get under Zuko’s skin.

“You like her!” she teases one day.

Even at the age of eight, Zuko knows that isn’t true. Mai is nice, he supposes, and pretty enough for a girl. Her hair looks soft and shiny, and her eyes never hold the same malice as his sister’s.

But she’s still Azula’s friend, first and foremost, and Zuko accepts the comradery by association in the same way he does with Ty Lee.

His mother tries to encourage the barely-there friendship, something sly in her smile that suggests Azula has shared the idea of his supposed crush with her as well.

And since Zuko dreads the day he faces his mother’s disappointment—hopefully less cruel and unforgiving than his father’s—he plays along. He lets Azula dangle the prospect of Mai’s hand in front of him like a carrot, an object of desire that he for some reason feels no pull towards.

Yes, he cares about Mai, enough so that he dashes to her side when Azula ignites an apple on her head with a knowing grin. She laughs, when he sends Mai and himself toppling into the nearby fountain. He blushes when he surfaces, spluttering as water soaks his clothes.

Azula smirks as Zuko glares at her. “See?” she says, laying a hand on Ty Lee’s shoulder. “I told you it would work!”

“Aww,” Ty Lee coos. “They’re so cute together.”

Mai groans as she stands, attempting to wring some of the wetness out of her hair. “You two are such... _ugh!”_

When she climbs out of the fountain, Zuko sees that her cheeks are bright red. For some reason, Zuko doesn’t think she’s embarrassed for the same reason as he is.

Then his mother returns with the news of his cousin’s death, and suddenly, the strange indifference he feels towards Mai is the furthest thing from his mind.

* * *

They kiss a few times, before he’s banished.

It’s awkward and clumsy in that prepubescent way, unsure and uncoordinated.

Mai’s mouth is soft against his when they press together for the slightest of moments, stolen bouts of affection that never reach beyond the still-smooth surface of Zuko’s skin.

Azula doesn’t tease them as much anymore; she lost interest in lighthearted bullying the same time their mother left, instead diverting her efforts to outdoing him in every capacity. She goads him into making a fool of himself in front of their father, and when she leaves him to reap the consequences of his failures, there is no soft, motherly touch to sooth the raw, tender aching of his burns.

Though he doesn’t say it, Zuko thinks his father is proud when he shares the news of his relationship with Mai. Her family is of noble status, and she will make a fine Fire Lady one day.

(Why, then, does the thought of marrying Mai—of producing heirs with her—fill him with nothing but dread?)

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it; he wakes up with an impossible quest and bandages covering the wreckage of his left eye the next week.

* * *

Zuko spends his spare moments thinking about where it all went wrong. He has, unfortunately, more time to ponder it than he would like; he supposes that’s what happens when one spends their life at sea. He tries to keep himself occupied by planning their course, charting and re-charting routes around the globe.

He searches the remains of the air temples. He scours the tomes of ancient texts for some clue, just one measly indication, of where the Avatar is hiding. He peels the wrappings off the burnt flesh of his face and tries not to cry.

He feels like he’s going in circles. Days bleed into nights, and the brand on his face dulls into a scar. It still stings, though not as much as the painful knowledge that his hearing and sight will never fully return. He is incomplete, inside and out; he is dishonorable, a deplorable monster.

His shame only worsens when they stop at a port and he realizes, with an overwhelming, guilty nausea, why he’s never liked Mai the way he knows he should have.

It’s just a boy—a peasant, no less—standing in front of a dessert stall.

“Free samples!” he announces, holding up a platter of pastries.

Zuko, detaching himself from Uncle’s side, finds himself drawn towards him.

The boy, who appears to be around Zuko’s age, grins at him, his green eyes bright and his smile dazzling. “Would you like to try one of my dad’s famous egg custard tarts?”

Zuko nods, and though he’d just finished a glass of pearl-milk tea at Uncle’s insistence, his mouth feels incredibly dry.

The boy shifts the weight of the platter so that it balances in one hand, leaving the other free to pluck up a small portion of the tart and hold it out to Zuko.

Their fingers brush as he takes the pastry, and Zuko’s heart leaps into his throat. His hand shakes as he brings the dessert to his lips, chewing and swallowing mechanically.

“This is really good,” he says, wincing at the scratchiness of his voice.

It’s a lie, of course; he couldn’t taste anything beyond the bitter bile of the nerves plaguing him.

The smile the boy directs at him makes his cheeks feel warm.

“Would you like to buy one?” he asks, setting down the tray and walking behind the cart.

“Yes, please,” Zuko says, pulling out his coin purse as the boy takes a fresh tart from the shelf. “How much?”

“They’re four copper pieces,” he replies, “but I’ll give it to you for half price.”

Zuko counts out the change, sliding it across the counter in exchange for the pastry. “Why?” 

He receives a smirk in response. “Because you’re cute.”

_Cute._

He clenches the tart in his fist.

 _Cute_ is not the word used to describe a prince, much less one so horribly disfigured. More importantly, _cute_ is not the word used by men in regards to anyone but women. Even a _peasant_ should know that.

(The most important fact, though, is that being called _cute_ by a boy should not fill Zuko’s stomach with flutter-bats.)

The pastry’s crust crumbles in his hand, the filling squirting out from between his fingers and splattering onto the side of his tunic.

He lets the remnants of the tart fall to the ground with a wet thud, features hardening at the wide-eyed look on the boy’s face.

“Does your father know,” he sneers, “that you’re a sodomite?”

He feels a tendril of flames escape from between his lips, and relishes in the way the boy flinches. He doesn’t say anything when Zuko stalks away, burning away the sticky custard still clinging stubbornly to his hand.

He ignores Uncle’s concerned meddling as he climbs back onto the ship. When he reaches his room, he rips the now-stained shirt off of his chest and reduces it to ashes.

He vows not to rest until he incinerates the deplorable desires within himself, too.

* * *

He’s doing well, he thinks. He quashes any unnatural thoughts as soon as they arise, and if he keeps his gaze locked on the ground whenever he trains with the male members of his crew—particularly those with a penchant for practicing shirtless—he can almost pretend to be normal.

Perhaps it’s the Spirits’ reward for his persistent self-correction that he sees the blinding blue light shining towards the heavens at the shore of the South Pole.

“Finally!” he says, turning away from the slowly dwindling glow to face his uncle. “Do you realize what this means?”

“I won’t get to finish my game?”

He tries not to scowl too deeply at his indifference. “No, Uncle; it means my search is about to come to an end.”

Uncle simply sighs and looks back at the Pai Sho board.

“That light came from an incredibly powerful source. It has to be him!”

“Or it’s the celestial lights,” Uncle says, placing a tile onto the board. “We've been down this road before, Prince Zuko. I don't want you to get too excited over nothing. Please, sit. Why don't you enjoy a cup of calming Jasmine tea?”

Zuko grits his teeth as the clinking of another tile on the board rings in his bad ear. “I don’t need any calming tea! I need to capture the Avatar!”

_I need to prove I’m still worthy of Father’s forgiveness._

“Helmsman,” he orders, “head a course for the light!”

* * *

His hands resolutely do not tremble as his crewmen fit his helmet over his head. He nods for them to take their leave as he clasps his fingers behind his back, squaring his shoulders as the bow of the ship groans open.

The cold air whipping through him is expected, and he wills himself not to shiver as he deboards onto the ice below. Two guards trail behind him, more for intimidation than protection. Zuko has dedicated the past three years to training, drilling the katas so deeply into his muscles that his instructors at the palace may even be proud. (He knows better, now, than to expect his father’s approval of his bending when Azula’s skills would always far surpass his.)

He hears the rapid crunch of snow beneath someone’s boots, and quickly kicks his leg up to knock the club out of the hand of the Water Tribe savage charging at him. Another flex of his leg sends the poor excuse of a warrior careening into a snowbank, whose angry spluttering he steadfastly ignores as he approaches the peasants gathered in the middle of what could be generously called a village.

“Where are you hiding him?”

Murmurs run through the crowd, but no one answers.

Zuko grits his teeth, gaze raking over the savages until it lands on two figures in the center of the group: one of them, a girl who could be no older than Azula, clings to the parka of an elderly woman.

He sneers as he darts forward and grabs the woman by her hood. “He’d be about this age,” he says, shaking her for emphasis, “and master of _all_ elements?”

He shoves the woman back towards the girl, whom she tearfully embraces. The girl glares at Zuko; he glares right back.

“Enough!” he snarls when no one responds, throwing an arc of fire up with his arm and finding a sick satisfaction in the way the villagers cower in fear. “I know you’re hiding him!”

Instead of telling him the information he _knows_ they’re harboring, someone lets loose a battle cry and charges at him. It’s the same mockery of a warrior as before, laughably easy to disarm and throw flat on his ass. Zuko punches a blast of fire at the annoying little roach, who throws a strange, curved weapon at him. He ducks easily, then watches the weapon fly off into the distance.

He turns back to the peasant with a scowl. The boy—sixteen at best—hoists himself back to his feet and catches a spear that another villager tosses to him. He clutches the wooden handle as he runs at Zuko again, the war paint on his face smudged and watery with snow.

For a second, Zuko is trapped in the intensity of his eyes. They’re a deep navy, bluer than the seas Zuko has spent years wandering. There’s an intelligence in them, an awareness that cuts through his armor and down to his very core. His irises match the indigo fabric of his parka, stark against the pale fur lining its hood and practically glowing against his dark skin, the solid edge of his jawline, the sharp cheekbones and chiseled brows and—

_No._

Zuko yanks the spear into his own hands, jabbing the blunt end of the weapon into the peasant’s forehead and sending him reeling. Then, fists clenched tightly, he snaps the shaft of the spear in two with a deafening crack and tosses them to the ground.

He sneers, only for the sharp impact of something metal slamming into the back of his head to wipe the expression right off his face.

He hisses as the contact knocks his helmet into the snow, exposing the raw skin of his scar to the chill. The peasant has the audacity to grin as he grabs his boomerang and plants an exaggerated kiss on it. Zuko focuses on the throbbing of what's likely a concussion in his skull rather than the motion of the boy’s lips, and hurriedly slams his helmet back onto his head when he notices the boy’s curious gaze tracking over the left side of his face.

He summons daggers of fire to his hands, determined to burn the newest source of his treasonous thoughts to ashes.

He doesn’t get the chance: a gust of air sweeps his feet out from under him and sends him careening face-first into the ice.

The echoes of the peasant’s laughter—bubbly in a way that makes Zuko’s heart feel something _sinful_ —ring in his ears as he brushes the snow off of him and shifts into a firebending stance.

Standing across from him, holding a wooden staff and spread into a bizarre iteration of a bending position, is...a child?

He’s tiny and bald, a blue tattoo snaking across his scalp and ending in an arrow on his forehead. His light skin and yellow robes clearly aren’t markers of the Water Tribe, steeped in a style that Zuko hasn’t seen outside of old, dusty scrolls.

It‘s impossible.

“Looking for me?” The kid waves his staff as he speaks in an infuriatingly cheery voice, the motion sending a wave of snow hurtling forward.

Zuko sees red, and the snow coating his armor evaporates into steam. “ _You’re_ the airbender? _You're_ the Avatar?”

Agni, this has to be a fucking joke.

The girl from before approaches, clearly confused. “Aang?”

So the Avatar has a name, not that Zuko cares; all he sees is his ticket home.

He takes said ticket home back to his ship when he offers himself as a prisoner in exchange for leaving the village unharmed. His terms are fine with Zuko, who’s perfectly content to forget all about the Water Tribe savages ( _especially_ the boy with the hypnotizing blue eyes).

It’s these impure thoughts, surely, that inspire the fates to take his chance at redemption away. The Avatar escapes onto the back of a massive, flying bison, and Zuko is left nursing new bruises and trying to forget the glint of the warrior’s (no, _savage’s)_ smile over the side of the beast’s saddle.

* * *

The Water Tribe boy, much to Zuko’s ire, has appointed himself as one of the Avatar’s companions and, by extension, as a major pain in Zuko’s ass.

He’s there to laugh when Zuko tastes bitter defeat at Kyoshi Island, and, worse, to mock him when Zhao throws him in prison alongside him and his waterbending sister. (At least then he’s far too focused on his impending execution for disobeying the terms of his banishment to think about the equally damning too-fast beating of his heart.)

He outmaneuvers his unsteady alliance with the pirates, and when Zuko rescues the Avatar from Zhao’s clutches, it’s his stupid face he sees that spurs him to reject the Avatar’s offer of friendship with such vitriol.

He battles Zuko during the Siege of the North, and the pain of his blows raining down on his already battered body pales in comparison to the burning embarrassment that festers in Zuko’s chest after the peasant rescues him from the cold. If it weren’t for the heartbreak it would assuredly cause Uncle, he might have preferred to be left in the tundra until his skin turned the same shade of blue as those stupid, mesmerizing eyes that haunt his every waking moment.

(And, though he’ll take it to the grave, that haunt his dreams, too.)

* * *

His father wants him imprisoned. His father thinks he’s a traitor.

He thinks he’s failed the Fire Nation with his inability to capture the Avatar, and has sent Zuko’s prodigal sister to finish the job for him.

He’s denounced his own brother, his own _child_ , as enemies of the crown.

(If only Father knew, Zuko thinks, just how far his son’s treason went.)

* * *

Zuko is sixteen the first time he tastes another boy’s lips.

He is sixteen, and banished from his home, and hidden in the lower deck of a ship full of refugees, and hating the way the rough mouth moving in tandem with his own sends a thrill down his spine in a way that kissing Mai never did.

What more does he stand to lose, he wonders, if he finally gives himself over to the blasphemous desires slowly eroding his innards?

He lets himself be swept away by the hurricane that is Jet, the lingering touches and brazen righteousness that goes against everything he has ever known.

But Zuko is no longer a prince; he is simply Li, a refugee serving tea with his uncle in Ba Sing Se’s lower ring. He is nobody, a scarred husk of a man whose corpse-like body only comes to life under Jet’s touch.

Jet’s hands are rough and demanding as they explore the most intimate parts of him, and Zuko is addicted to it. He carries out the Freedom Fighters’ useless crusades for the chance to feel Jet’s lips on his again, just as he entertains Uncle’s every whim to avoid any suspicion of his nighttime activities.

He’s understood from day one that Uncle can never, _ever_ know about the wrongness ingrained in his very being. He can’t know about the treason he commits each time he disappears as the Blue Spirit, the drunken flush he hides behind the mask that feels like a desecration of his mother’s memory.

He can’t know the way Zuko lets himself _feel,_ the way he fraternizes with the physical manifestation of his darkest desires.

Zuko knows Jet is selfish, but he is, too. When teeth mark his pale flesh with splotches of shame far worse than the scar on his face, he is all too willing to accept the carnal subjugation.

Jet takes, and he takes, and he takes, and still Zuko seeks to give him more. He tells himself this is love, because this is still better than the harsh touches and cold words of his childhood that he’s conflated with affection.

Zuko bares himself to Jet, exposing the treacherous, bloody thing beating behind his ribcage. He shows his skin, scarred and burnt and imperfect, and convinces himself that the drag of calloused fingers across his chest has a goal beyond selfish release.

He wrings groans of pleasure out of Jet with his hands, his mouth, his war-ravaged body, and feels absolved. It’s sinful, yes, but Zuko already lost his honor long ago.

When Jet accuses him of being a firebender—when he reveals the real reason he’s kept him around—Zuko can’t help but feel relieved that it’s the only secret he tries to expose.

The Dai Li haul Jet off to prison. Zuko finishes his shift as though nothing has changed and prays Uncle doesn’t see him cry.

* * *

He doesn’t feel another touch until he’s back in Caldera, preening under his nation’s approval.

Finally _,_ he’s home. Finally, things are how they’re supposed to be.

Part of the return to normalcy—to _rightness_ —is Mai at his side. She’s matured, in their time apart; no longer a young girl, but rather the elegant woman that any Fire Lord would be proud to have at his side.

He’s less clumsy, now, when he kisses her. There’s an air of practice in the placement of his hands, the angle of his lips against hers.

If she wonders where his proficiency comes from, she has the grace not to ask.

It should be satisfying, the way the simple drag of his teeth along her throat can make her moan in the soft lamplight of her apartment. But it isn’t, and Zuko is overwhelmed by the feeling of wrongness in his chest.

Yet he is the perfect son. He is the crown prince to the throne, the future Fire Lord, the pride of Sozin’s bloodline.

He is so, so desperate for redemption, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to regain his legacy.

So when he sneaks away from the palace in the middle of the night to purchase a pouch of ground-up herbs and waxy rolling paper, it’s a righteous pursuit. When he lights the end of the joint with his fingertip and tastes the same earthy smoke that Jet used to tinge their kisses with, it’s a noble deed. And when he leans into the hazy embrace of the drug in his veins while he pleases Mai with uncoordinated fingers—hoping, _praying_ she doesn’t notice he can’t go further because he’s still soft beneath his robes—, it’s the act of long-lost honor regained


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little bit more explicit than the last but again nothing too graphic

The next time Zuko comes face to face with the boy at the center of his nefarious desire, his steely blue eyes are hard as flint.

He’s less of a boy, now, and more of a man, in the same way that Zuko expelled the last remnants of his fractured youth in the bunker along with the aftershocks of his father’s lightning.

“Hello,” he says, cringing as the words leave his lips. “Zuko, here.”

The Avatar and his group, as expected, do not take well to his presence, so Zuko opens his big fat mouth and makes it worse.

“I heard you guys flying around down there, so, I just thought I'd wait for you here. I know you must be surprised to see me here.”

“Not really, since you've followed us all over the world.”

“Sokka’s right,” the waterbender—Katara, he thinks—says.

He hasn’t seen her since Ba Sing Se, when he’d betrayed her—betrayed _Uncle—_ and her glare now is even fiercer than the one she’d fixed him with in the catacombs. The memory is full of a shame worse than his already overflowing mountain of mistakes erupting straight out of his heart.

“Right,” he says slowly, glancing between her and Sokka (the knowledge of whom’s name somehow makes the clusterfuck of a situation even worse). “Well, uhhh, anyway…”

 _Think, dammit,_ he orders his brain. _Remember why you ran away (and not who you ran away from)._

“What I wanted to tell you about is that I've changed, and I, uh, I'm good now, and well I think I should join your group.” The words are rushed, as though if he vomits more of them out it’ll somehow undo all the damage he’s done. 

“Oh, and I can teach firebending to you,” he adds, pointing to the Avatar. “See, I, uh…”

Divine intervention that he most certainly doesn’t deserve saves him from continuing to ramble in the most disgusting way possible: the Avatar’s bison _licks him._

It’s wet and gross and dripping down his body like the sweat in his palms.

“You want to _what_ now?” the blind earthbending girl shrieks.

Katara scoffs. “You can't possibly think that any of us would trust you, can you? I mean, how stupid do you think we are?!”

“Yeah,” her brother echoes. “All you've ever done is hunt us down and try to capture Aang!”

“I've done some good things!” Zuko splutters, refusing to meet Sokka’s eyes. “I mean, I could have stolen your bison in Ba Sing Se, but I set him free. That's something!”

He shudders as the bison licks him again.

“Appa does seem to like him,” the earthbender says thoughtfully.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Toph!” ( _Toph—_ he files the name away in the overflowing mental tabulation of everyone he’s fucked over.) “He probably just covered himself in honey or something so that Appa would lick him. I'm not buying it.”

Zuko makes the mistake of looking at Sokka’s face while he speaks, and suddenly the air feels a whole lot thicker. “I can understand why you wouldn't trust me,” he says, “and I know I've made some mistakes in the past.”

“Like when you attacked our village?”

Zuko cringes at the reminder of the start of all this mess (both with the Avatar and, even worse, this stupid _thing_ in his chest that’s fluttered ever since he first met Sokka).

“Or when you stole my mother's necklace and used it to track us down and capture us?” Katara sneers.

“Look,” he says, sighing, “I admit I've done some awful things. I was wrong to try to capture you, and I'm sorry that I attacked the Water Tribe. And I never should have sent that Fire Nation assassin after you. I'm going to try and stop—“

“Wait.” Sokka’s voice is low, dangerous ( _thrilling)_. “ _You_ sent Combustion Man after us?”

“Well, that's not his name, but—“

“Oh, sorry,” Sokka sneers. “I didn't mean to insult your friend!”

“He’s not my friend!”

“That guy locked me and Katara in jail and tried to blow us all up!” Toph snaps, shaking the temple floor with an angry stomp of her foot.

Zuko looks around desperately at the people whose lives he’s undoubtedly made a living hell in the past few months. He was angry at all of them—he still is, if he’s being honest—and it’s just not _fair!_ Why can’t they see his trying to atone for the worst of his many sins? Why can’t they let him try to right the only wrong he’s able to? (He’s tried, so many times, to fix the other broken pieces of himself, but it never works. Now, at least, he may have a chance at pennance.)

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he asks, beseeching the Avatar with his eyes. “You once said you thought we could be friends. You know I have good in me.”

The Avatar stares at him for a moment before shaking his head. “There's no way we can trust you after everything you've done. We'll never let you join us.”

_“After everything you’ve done.”_

Yes, he’s done some shitty things, an endless trail of fuck-ups that the Avatar and his stupid friends don’t even know the half of. They haven’t seen him at his worst—seen him for what he _is_ —and they’ve still deemed him unworthy. He should take this message as what it is: an indisputable signal that Zuko has wronged the Spirits past the point of no return.

But he begs anyways. He kneels and offers himself up as a prisoner. He pleads to the same faces he’s spat on, the ones he’s cursed to hell and back as he stewed in his rage.

He gets a water whip to the jaw and the promise of attack if he returns. He keeps his head low as he leaves the air temple and wills himself not to look back.

He does anyway.

* * *

He burns the earthbender’s feet that night. It’s an accident, but she doesn’t believe him.

He doesn’t blame her.

* * *

He saves them from the assassin he hired—nearly dying in the process—and it’s apparently the price of his retribution. (If only he could atone for the rest of his mistakes so easily.)

Afterwards, Sokka leads him to a room at the end of one of the air temple’s corridors. “So, here you go, home sweet home, I guess, you know, for now,” he says, leaning awkwardly in the doorway. “Unpack? Lunch, soon? Uh...welcome aboard?”

Zuko nods and begins to take out his meager belongings, if only so that his mind can’t wander to the definition of Sokka’s shoulders as he walks away.

* * *

Katara threatens his life, and he loses his bending. Somehow, neither of these facts are as damning as the third, traitorous thought slinking through his bloodstream like poison: he has a crush on Sokka.

It rattles in his brain and sinks in his gut as he and Aang visit the Sun Warriors, and it reminds him as he’s surrounded by the dragons’ flames that he’s undeserving of the power to wield such beauty. It creeps up on him like a fungus when he spars with Sokka, leering blasphemous things in his ear whenever his eyes stray past the blade and to the person wielding it. It contorts his body in its taloned grasp, plaguing him with dreams that leave him sticky and panting and wishing, for the first time in his life, for nightmares.

The monstrous thing inside of him rears its ugly head once more when he volunteers to help Sokka on his suicide mission to the Boiling Rock.

He thinks, if he dies here, he may at least have a chance at reaching purgatory.

* * *

Then he gets thrown in the cooler with Sokka, and his treacherous want springs free.

They kiss in that freezer, chapped lips and chattering teeth and shared heat. They kiss in his cell, and he feels the farthest thing from imprisoned. They kiss in his room at the air temple, and on the winding path before he confronts his sister’s airship, and again beneath the stars at their new campsite.

They kiss on the beach at Ember Island, sand between their toes, and they kiss at night when they sneak back to the room Zuko has claimed as his own, tipsy off the leftover baiju they find in the broken liquor cabinet.

The softness of silken sheets beneath Zuko’s knees as he straddles Sokka is a foreign sensation; it feels almost wrong, this degree of comfort, when he’s doing something so paradoxically undeserving of it.

It might be better, a part of him thinks, to feel the discomfort of ratty floorboards and lumpy mattresses again, like when he was with Jet. Their moments together were fleeting, stolen bursts of sparks that were over and done with whenever Jet finished.

Now, pressed close to Sokka, Zuko feels like he’s on fire.

The moan of his name—not _Li,_ not the fake identity he layered on top of all the other false versions of himself—sends a thrill through Zuko’s body as he pushes Sokka back against the pillows. He trails his lips across the faint stubble of his jaw, down the soft skin of his neck.

“Fuck,” Sokka mutters, hips stuttering slightly forward as Zuko bites down on the dip in the bone just above his clavicle.

Zuko pauses, looking up at him. “Is this okay?”

Sokka nods, and Zuko takes immense satisfaction in the way his breath catches as he sucks a hickey between his teeth, tasting salty sweat on his tongue; and though the mark isn’t nearly as noticeable as the few Jet had allowed him to leave on his comparably lighter skin, it nonetheless fills him with a thrill of possessive pride.

He’s overcome with the mounting need to explore more of Sokka’s body, and shifts his hands to clutch at the back of his shirt.

“Can I?” he asks, tugging lightly.

“Yeah,” Sokka says, watching with wide, dilated eyes as Zuko peels the fabric off of him and tosses it onto the floor.

“Hey,” he whines. “I liked that shirt.”

His protests die in his throat when Zuko runs his fingers over the bare expanse of his chest, determined to memorize every inch.

Sokka’s skin is chiseled marble, his body far more built than his loose-fitting tunics let on. Zuko feels slighted, honestly, that he hasn’t had the chance to stare at ( _and touch and kiss and worship)_ it before. He trails his hands across the smooth panes of his chest, reveling in the way that the muscles tense ever so slightly beneath his palms.

“Damn,” Sokka says, panting. “Are your hands on fire?”

Zuko stills. He remembers the last time his body warmed uncontrollably with the lust in his veins, the way he’d been so thankful that Jet had dropped the issue only to later realize he’d known his secret all along.

“Shit, are they too hot? I- sorry, I just—“

Whatever response he’s expecting, it’s not Sokka snorting and pulling him in for a kiss. “I was just kidding, jerkbender.”

“Oh.”

He doesn't realize his mouth is still open in confused shock until he feels Sokka’s tongue slip between his lips, hot and demanding like the hips pressing up against his. The warmth radiating from the body beneath him is intoxicating, and Zuko wants—no, _needs_ —to feel that heat sink into every inch of his being. He wraps his arms around Sokka, tugging him impossibly close, skin against skin.

His hands roam Sokka’s back as he catalogues every sound that the drag of his nails elicits, the cacophony of little gasps and groans that Zuko would wage another war just for the chance of hearing again.

He feels Sokka tentatively worming his own hands up Zuko’s shirt, and he shivers at the feeling of his fingertips tracing his abdomen. Sokka leans forward to pull at the hem of Zuko’s shirt, his lips practically touching the shell of Zuko’s functional ear as he whispers, “Your turn?”

Zuko nods, helping Sokka strip his tunic off of him. He preens at the hunger shining in Sokka’s eyes, his chest no doubt as flushed as his cheeks.

And then, when Sokka says his name, it’s no longer with the breathy, lustful quality of just seconds ago.

Zuko feels the floor drop out from under him.

“What?” He knows his voice cracks as he says it, just as he knows that he’s been foolish to get his hopes up.

(Because kissing may be excusable, in the grand scheme of things, but his thoughts had derailed far past that into a dirty amalgamation of urges best left in foreclosed apartments in overrun cities far, far away.)

“What happened?”

Zuko blinks. “Huh?”

“To your…” Sokka trails off, tracing his fingers over the skin on Zuko’s shoulder.

Zuko realizes, with a horrifying clarity, that this is much, much worse than impurity-fueled regret.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “Nothing happened.”

He feels goosebumps erupt on his arms as Sokka’s skin brushes over the scars—faded, yes, but never truly gone—littering his biceps and spreading overtop his collarbones.

“That’s not nothing,” Sokka murmurs.

Every fiber of Zuko’s being is screaming at him to run, but running requires turning around, and if he turns around…

(...If he turns around, the mottled skin of his back will surely scare Sokka away for good.)

“It is,” he insists, though it’s less a statement than flat-out begging.

For the first time since dating Sokka, Zuko yearns for the relationships of his past. Mai knew his father, and by extension knew better than to question his means of parenting; and while Jet may not have known who Zuko really was (it didn’t matter, not when he still knew all the most shameful pieces of him), he was no stranger to the scars of war.

Sokka frowns, raising his hand to Zuko’s forehead and brushing a loose strand of hair behind his ear. It’s gentle and tender in a way that only Uncle has ever been towards him, but Zuko flinches anyway.

“I should go,” he says, scooting backwards until he’s off of Sokka’s legs.

“Wait!”

Sokka looks ready to sit up, maybe to try to cajole Zuko back into bed with him. (If he does, Zuko thinks, at least it’ll be familiar. At least it will lead to that pleasure-pain he knows so well.)

But Sokka doesn’t grab his arm, or chase after his lips, or twist his words into some sick siren call that always ends with Zuko on his knees. (It’s almost funny—for all the time he’s spent kneeling, he’s yet to see any god.)

“It was him,” Sokka says quietly, “wasn’t it?”

Zuko eyes him warily. “Who?”

“Your father.”

He wishes the accusation didn’t make him recoil, almost as much as he wishes it wasn’t true to begin with. More than that, though, he wishes that the lessons burnt into his skin had taught him something beyond just serving as a reminder of his weaknesses.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hisses, crawling the rest of the way off of the bed.

He takes a nauseating satisfaction in the way Sokka’s breath hitches when he turns around to scrounge for his shirt on the ground; at least now, Sokka has a good reason to return to a normalcy that Zuko has been condemned never to have.

“You know he’s a sick fucking bastard, right?”

Zuko freezes only for a moment before he shrugs the fabric over his shoulders, still tingling from the touch of Sokka’s fingers (lingering like the burning hands that dug into them over and over and over).

“He deserves to rot for how he hurt you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Zuko snarls, spinning around.

“No,” Sokka says, “I don’t think you do.”

“I told him on the day of the eclipse.” Zuko doesn’t know why he’s still speaking, but now that he’s started, the words won’t stop pouring out. “I told him it was cruel and it was wrong.”

The grin that spreads across his face is even more warped than his scar. “And you know what he did? He shot me full of fucking lightning.”

The world around him crumbles to static, the same fuzzy separation of self he felt when he tried to keep the untamed electricity from frying his heart, and he ignores what are surely Sokka’s protests as he heads to the door.

It’s Zuko’s bedroom, but he leaves anyway.

* * *

Sokka apologizes the next day, and Zuko wonders if it was always this easy to be absolved.

* * *

The others find out, mostly thanks to Toph and her all-seeing feet. He receives his fair share of ribbing—not to mention another volley of threats from Katata if he so much as singes a single hair on her brother’s head—but nothing more.

They continue to train, and take breaks on the beach, and harass Sokka for his attempt to mold Suki out of sand. 

(Suki says he should’ve used Zuko as his model, to which Sokka retorts that he can’t hope to capture such beauty; the others laugh, and Zuko wishes he actually _did_ have his likening depicted, if only to avoid the renewed wave of teasing.)

It’s strange, the nonchalance with which they’ve accepted what Zuko and Sokka have officially chosen to call a relationship.

 _It’s strange_ , Zuko thinks as he watches Sokka and Suki attempt to take on the two waterbenders in an all-out splash-fight, _but not in a bad way._

* * *

It’s a full moon the first time Zuko drags his thumb under the seam of Sokka’s waistband. It’s a full moon, and Sokka’s skin glows ethereal under the pale light, and everything is right until it isn’t.

“Wait.”

Sokka’s fingers are warm as he wraps them around Zuko’s wrist, stilling its motion.

Zuko retracts his hand immediately. “Sorry,” he says, shifting backwards. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Sokka doesn’t look mad, though, just... embarrassed?

“It's not that,” Sokka says, sighing. “I don’t really know how to say this, but I’ve never done this before.”

Of course. Of _course_ Zuko will be the one to corrupt the Spirits’ closest attempt at perfection.

Zuko swallows and tries to keep the shame and desperation out of his voice. “I know it’s not the same as, uh, with a girl, but—“

“No, I mean…” Sokka sighs and looks down at his half-undone pants. “With anyone.”

“Oh.”

That’s all he can muster: “oh.” How pitiful, really, that it’s his only response to the knowledge (the thrilling, _shameful_ knowledge) that he will be Sokka’s first.

“But I want to,” Sokka says, taking Zuko’s hand in his and guiding it back towards his crotch. “With you.”

“Are you sure?” Zuko asks, trying not to focus on the placement of his palm. “We don’t have to.”

Sokka seems to consider for a moment. “Maybe we should just take it slow.”

This is the part where Zuko should tell him he doesn’t know the meaning of the word slow. He knows the haste of getting it over and done with, the speed of a shameful, sloppy fuck in the dark of an abandoned apartment. He knows secrets and lies and guilty, fast-paced pleasure, but he does not know slow.

“Okay,” is what he says instead.

And as they return to languid kisses and careful, roaming touches, Zuko finds that he means it.

* * *

They’re leaving Ember Island in the morning, and the Avatar is missing, and Zuko knows he should be terrified, but Sokka is naked in his bed and if his brain roams beyond the cataclysmic image splayed out before him he thinks he might implode.

He’s only fantasized, until now, about what Sokka would look like without any layers of cloth between them; his imagination has been working overtime for months, yet for all of its fruitful labor, it still falls pitifully short of the truth.

The truth is this: after so many long years on this earth, Zuko thinks he finally sees religion in the form of the heavenly-sculpted marvel in his sheets.

He kisses every inch of Sokka with a reverence to rival the most devout, catalogs every one of his moans and choked-off sighs whenever he lets a bit of his inner flame heat his lips.

He nips at Sokka’s skin as he trails his mouth down his chest, stopping just below his right hip. He plants an ember-tinged kiss on the spot before looking up, his chin resting on Sokka’s leg and eyebrow raised in a silent question.

Sokka’s eyes widen slightly, the small rings of blue visible shimmering like an ocean that Zuko, for once, wouldn’t mind getting lost in. His Adam’s apple bobs, and then, with a shaky exhale, Sokka nods.

His hands tremble as Zuko’s breath ghosts over him, and Zuko gently guides one of them to his head. He sighs as Sokka’s fingers scratch lightly over his scalp with an almost foreign gentleness.

They tighten suddenly when Zuko takes him in his mouth, the weight on his tongue both familiar and wonderfully new. He doesn’t tug at Zuko’s hair as he moves, doesn’t wrestle away his last semblance of control. He shudders and moans, yes, but he doesn’t take what isn’t his, doesn’t hold Zuko still between his palms as he chases his own pleasure.

Sokka is so, _so_ good, and the praises he sings over his stuttered panting make Zuko think that maybe, just maybe, this type of love isn’t such a bad thing.

(How can it be, if Sokka is making such beautiful sounds?)

His fingers remain in Zuko’s hair after he finishes, sighing contentedly as Zuko slowly releases him from his lips. Once he catches his breath, he coaxes Zuko up towards tender kisses that feel utterly foreign, almost more so than the blinding jolt of pleasure that shoots through his body when Sokka reaches down to touch him between his thighs.

“Sokka,” he says breathlessly, hips jerking of their own accord at the fingers curling around him. “You don’t- you don’t have to.”

It’s painful, really, to offer him this out; but Sokka has already given him more than he’d ever hoped for, and sparing him the burden of Zuko’s own release is the least he can do.

“I want to,” Sokka says, pressing his lips to Zuko’s forehead. “Please, let me take care of you.”

Is it selfish to accept his offer? Is it a Spirits-sanctioned test of his last vestige of honor? Or, worse, is it all some sort of ploy to get him to reveal the first of his far too many weaknesses?

Sokka’s hand doesn’t move, and he knows that if he asked him to, he would stop entirely. Because Sokka is not Mai, and Sokka is not Jet. Sokka is not that boy with the egg custard tarts, and he is not the poor Earth Kingdom girl whom Uncle set him up with only for him to wrap the same lips she’d kissed around Jet’s dick an hour later.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Okay.”

* * *

A tent should not be scary.

Massive sea serpents? Lightning-wielding sisters? Twelve-year-olds with mystical powers? _Those_ are scary. (Zuko should know, considering he’s fought all of them.)

But a tent? A measly tent in the middle of a camp full of old people? _That_ should not be scary.

And yet, here he is, kneeling on the dewy grass outside like a child, too afraid to duck under the stupid tarp.

“Hey, are you okay?” Zuko looks up to see Sokka standing over him, brows furrowed in concern.

“No, I’m not okay. My uncle hates me, I know it.”

He hears Sokka sigh, and then there’s the familiar warmth of another body leaning against his.

“He loved and supported me in every way he could, and I still turned against him,” he bites out, furiously blinking away tears. “How can I even face him?”

Sokka slings his arm around his shoulders and pulls him close to his side. “Zuko, you're sorry for what you did, right?”

“More sorry than I've been about anything in my entire life.”

“Then he’ll forgive you,” Sokka says. “I know he will.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” Zuko whispers, the words catching in his throat as he chokes them out. “What if I did something unforgivable?”

_What if he finds out what I truly am, something far worse than a traitor?_

“What if,” he continues, voice trembling, “what if he finds out I’ll always be wrong?”

“Helping the Avatar is right. Iroh knows that.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He digs his teeth into his lip to keep it from trembling, but there’s no way to hide the tremors wracking his body. “He told me once that he thought of me as a son, and I...how could he love me if I’m like _this?”_

He’s dimly aware he’s crying, now, tears escaping down his cheek in rivulets that he’s far too tired to wipe away.

Sokka’s arms are warm as they wrap around him, and Zuko tries in vain to hold back a sob when his forehead meets the soft fabric covering his chest.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he murmurs into Zuko’s hair as he rubs calming circles into his back. “Absolutely nothing. And I know your uncle would agree.”

“How?”

Sokka pulls back to look him in the eyes, hands still loosely linked around his neck. “Because if he doesn’t, he’s going down with his brother.”

* * *

Sokka’s right: Uncle does forgive him.

(A part of Zuko can’t help but think it’s because he still can bring himself to tell his uncle the whole truth.)

* * *

There’s an endless sea of clashing flames, unhinged laughter, crackling lightning, and then...nothing.

Zuko wakes up hours later to a new, scarring wound marring his body and the sudden, overwhelming certainty that he should bare the rest of his mangled parts, fully and completely.

He summons his uncle with a barely-there voice, and cries the second his familiar, wrinkled face enters his chambers. He smells like jasmine and fresh soap and even though it’s tinged with the acrid stench of war-sown ashes, it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever known.

“Uncle,” he rasps, wrapping his weakened arms around him until Katara clears her throat, and even though his uncle’s embrace is heavenly, the sight of Katara alive and well (and not paralyzed as Azula’s lightning rushes towards her) is somehow even more beautiful.

Then he notices Sokka lingering in the background, and suddenly, nothing else matters, not even Uncle or Katara’s presences. He kisses him the second he limps to his bedside, pouring his affection and gratitude and sweet, sweet _relief_ into it with all the energy he can muster.

Uncle only smiles when they break apart, and for once, Zuko thinks he may finally be able to breathe.

* * *

They make love the night of his coronation.

It’s a statement so full of contradictions that it’s almost laughably unbelievable, but it’s the truth. As of today, Zuko is Fire Lord; and as of tonight, he’s closer to Sokka than he’s been to anyone before.

He moans Sokka’s name like a prayer as he rocks his hips back to meet his thrusts, and dedicates himself to kissing every inch that he can reach with a peace of mind he never dared imagine.

It’s hard to reconcile, sometimes, that this is not a quickie fueled by post-heist adrenaline. This is not a last-ditch fumble for any sort of distraction from the crushing guilt and anger, a reckoning on his hands and knees because even his scar was sometimes too much for Jet to handle.

This is Zuko, in the palace of his birthright, on the cusp of a new beginning. Tomorrow he will begin to rebuild a world that his forefathers tore apart; but right now, with Sokka in his bed and their hands clasped tightly together, the weight of the crown doesn’t feel quite so heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> internalized homophobia can be such a scary thing but i promise it gets better, thank you all for reading

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed!!!


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